Red Sky
by Kavaul
Summary: Gwen's a human, Trent's a vampire, and it's not twu wuv at first sight. Guess the pairing, kids.
1. Chapter 1

**Because I'm cool, I... **_**don't**_** have copyrights to TDI. And I'm kind of borrowing the idea of the Sookie Stackhouse series. ( not that you're going to see Eric or Bill here, sadly. I mean, even if you know what it is. Uh. I'm just, eh, using the part where vampires 'come out of the coffin' and the Japanese have developed synthetic blood for the `vamps. )**

**Oh, and this is Trent/Gwen, with minor Duncan/Courtney, Lindsay/Tyler, and Bridgette/Geoff.**

**But, sorry to those people out there, I **_**refuse**_** to be one of those fics where Gwen is all "I LOVE YOU CHANGE ME INTO A VAMPIRE" and Trent's all "KAY" and then they **_**live happily ever after what is this silliness**_**. D: The beginning doesn't have much except for a few introductions.**

_Red sky in the morning,_

_sailors take warning_

The sun was clawing it's way up, up, up, across the canvas of night, the blazing halo just peeking over the horizon and turning the skyline into the golden-pink of dawn. It was the chilly-warm of new dawn, dew collecting on grass and brick. The beginning of a new day revealed itself with an extravagant flourish, throwing the cloak of night back to reveal the morning in all of it's glory. The sky was tripping and tottering along the line between a dark, dusky pink and crimson, but it finally plunged into red when the sun pushed itself off the horizon, independent and defiant.

On this glorious morning to a new day, a city was moving to life. Lights went on, and blankets went off, and then, like clockwork, the people in this city proceeded to do whatever they do every day. Whomever said that we are creatures of habit struck closer to home than he or she thought. However.

There is one particular person that this story will center around, and that would be a tall, lanky girl whom goes by the name of 'Gwen'. During the glorious morning, she was fumbling blindly out of the suddenly tangled blanket (dark blue, striped with a murky green – she'd fallen in love with it as soon as she'd set her eyes on that thing) and quickly slipping on clothes, checking the digital clock that sat innocuously on top of her dresser.

She'd had it for years.

It's alarm had been late for varying spans of time (it _usually_ was an hour late) for years.

She loved it anyway, out of fond memory and the fact that she'd covered it with stickers pilfered from clothes tags with a well-placed fingernail and quick peel. In fact, that was _part_ of the fond memory regarding the old, dilapidated digital clock.

However, with a final, stumbling and resounding _thump_ into her doorframe as she hopped on one foot in an effort to jerk on her trademark boots, she swiped the backpack hanging on her doorknob and was off.

From the kitchen, her mother called out a quick 'Goodbye! Have fun! Don't talk to clowns!'.

The vampires had gone 'out of the coffin', so to speak – however, this was a bad pun reserved only for the tall and skinny boys who frequented the staircases, news reporters, drunk people or mildly inebriated people at the Prom who'd drunk the spiked punch – a year ago. After a while, one got used to the almost novel idea of vampires amongst 'us'.

Then it became almost irritating when some 'anti's attempted to rouse up 'some kind of _upwelling_ against this, surely, invasion of vampires who are planning to take over the world.'

Gwen would probably be categorized as a pro-Vampire activist if there ever was one, but she was hardly an airhead, or stupid. So this meant that she wasn't exactly _panting_ after some random vampire to Turn her.

(There'd been a girl at their school who'd tried, and then she'd come back in the afternoon whining about how being a vamp' wasn't awesome and was there a way that she could be turned _back_? She'd convinced Lindsay to bite her as an experimental procedure before she was transferred to one of the all-vampire schools by her rich parents.)

Many people tended to joke that Lindsay – vapid blonde who was the school idiot – was the one who was the airhead, not _them_.

Because Gwen was kind and nice and lovely and beautiful on the inside and outside (pasty-white makeup and dark lipstick with black-and-gray-green hair and black outfit counted as beautiful, right?), she didn't use that joke. Much. To Lindsay's _face_, anyway, which is what counts.

Of course.

Surprisingly, on this morning, Gwen arrives to Homeroom on time through some miraculous aligning of the stars, striding to her seat and dropping her books, hastily taken out of her backpack before said backpack was stuffed into her locker. Lindsay was sitting to her right, flanked by Beth, her ever-loyal subject ever since she got her braces removed over the summer.

The bell rang, and Lindsay visibly jumped, skirt going up before she smoothed it down.

After that, the male counterparts in the room visibly flinched and turned away when her naive blue gaze looked around in confusion as to why everyone was looking at her.

Gwen gave a subtle roll of her eyes, leaning over to murmur to Lindsay (who looked over to Gwen with curiosity, since Gwen _never_ spoke to the vapid blonde) "Hey, Lindsay, Tyler transferred back." Said blonde had been bothering everybody over the summer about "Where's Tyler?" and proceeding to ask random males as to if they were Tyler.

Tyler himself had been one of her more, _ah_, _good_ choices in boyfriends. Not that she had boyfriends – in fact, he was her exact second, by her reckoning, she'd told Beth one afternoon. This was as doubtful as her memory and counting skills, so they didn't take it seriously.

Lindsay turned her blue eyes onto Gwen, lips opening to form the words, "Tyler _who_?"

Blonde eyebrows creased in confusion without realizing it, and the self-proclaimed goth-girl turned away with a mixture of mild exasperation and amusement. Courtney tapped her heels on the tiles, sitting at the very front – of _course_ she'd be here before everyone else. Duncan, proclaimed delinquent, sauntered through the door and sat next to her.

Gwen just watched and offered a lazy high-five to him, a sort of encouragement – her little mohawked friend had been hoping to 'score' the CIT girl all summer as well. It seemed like everything happened over the summer.

And then there was another thud-thud of feet outside the door, a shuffling, pause, and then an almost musical twoomp-thwoomp as the teacher trotted inside. Giving everyone a dazzling smile and trademark imitation of a 'finger-gun', Chris McLean (AKA; Mr. McLean) was standing in all of his vain, conceited and insensitive-jerk glory. "Hey-ey-ey, victi-I mean, new prospects for educational glory."

Those who had had him last year proceeded to facedesk in despair at their ineptitude in life and luck, and those who hadn't proceeded to do the same, remembering the horror stories from those who _had_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Red sky at night,**

Sailor's delight

After an otherwise ordinary day (Lindsay was otherwise more... enthusiastic when she realized who, exactly, Tyler was after staring at him from across the gym) Gwen made her way home from school, flanked by Duncan and Geoff. Duncan split off from the group at a fork in the road, naturally, with the parting shout over his shoulder of having to go harass Courtney before his parole officer realized that he was late.

Geoff offered the excuse of having to do homework, but she noticed that his home was the other way and the street he was taking went to Bridgette's.

Deciding not to call him on that, Gwen stretched, pulled down her traditional black skirt, and tromped on with little drama (she was a big girl, after all, even if it was dark already). Of course, until the tree started writhing above her. Just the wind, she decided, but moved out of the way all the same. It was when it started making garbled sounds that she stopped, and when something fell out of it with a slightly wet thud, that she got worried.

Keeping a safe distance all the same, she politely stared at the dark mass of something on the sidewalk. It twitched, and she blinked quickly. And then it _unfolded_ itself into another teen, with the traditional camouflage top and jeans.

And, of course, the _not_ quite so traditional coffin-shaped stitching on his right shoulder that signified that he was, in fact, a vampire going to Night School (another pun muchly used)

So. Said vampire apparently going to Night School coughed a little into his elbow (she noted that) and proceeded to inform her, "Uh, s_sss_orry." Drawing out the consonant in an effort to prolong the time he needed to think up a plausible explanation; "..." He offered.

"... Whatthehell. Why were you in a tree?" Gwen arched in eyebrow, not quite unafraid but confident in the fact that she had pepper spray in her bag. Pepper spray, whilst not quite twenty-first era technology, worked fine to blind all creatures and send them into spasming agony while their victims fled for their dear lives.

Of course, she still kept her nice, lovely _personal bubble_ far, far away from the stated vampire.

Said vampire rubbed the back of his neck, looked around, and stared at the tree contemplatively. "...Dunno. Um, sorry. I'm Trent." He held out a hand, Gwen stared at it for a very long time, and then informed him of how easy it would be to drag her to him and suck her blood if she took that hand, so, sorry, no thanks, maybe when there's _people around_ and _witnesses_.

Because even with pepper spray in hand, Gwen was not quite ready to trust a vampire that fell out of _a tree_ (whatthehell?), alone, with just her and the vampire –

spotting some movement out of the corner of her eye, she assigned it the identity of the resident hobo. Thus; just her, him, and an unreliable witness. God knew why she was even sticking around.

Considering her options – curiosity or going straight home and eating some goopy carbonara her mother concocted? In the end, curiosity won (but she was keeping the damn pepper spray) and she folded her arms.

"Shouldn't you be at _class_?"

"..........You know, you're kind of ri-...wait. Do you have a watch?"

"...Sure."

"What time is it?"

"... Mm, eight, almost nine, give or take a few minutes?"

"....OhshitohshitohshitI'msolat-uh, bye, I gotta go, I'm, um, yeah, I'm...yeah,"

"I'm Gwen, lovely to meet y-" Cutting herself off once she knew he was gone (in the wrong direction, no less, but she had a feeling his sense of direction was skewed by falling from that tree), Gwen started the not-quite-long trek to her house (school had ended a bit early, and the most of the trip had already been done when she met whats-is-name, yes, Trent, so she could convince her mother she'd been staying at a friend's for a little while)

She felt kind of bad for him, though - if what she thought was right, he'd probably been carried up there in a prank concocted by friends. The leaves were thick enough to block out sun, but it was far away enough that he'd be confused. Very, very confused. On the other hand, Gwen thought, he didn't seem quite impressively intelligent. Hnh.

Looking up, she noticed that the sky wasn't the midnight blue she was expecting, but rather a fragmented crimson mixing with the blue, so dark it might not be recognized, a testament to the sun's power.

Gwen wondered if that was a bad sign. She'd heard a 'red sky' saying before, once, but that was when her family had gone on a road trip and decided to stop at a whaling museum _(a whaling museum, of all things)_.

And so, life went on until the second (un)eventful meeting which both of them kind of wanted to forget and was hardly romantic in the least. The first meeting was hardly epic, however. The _second_, though... was an epic meeting, but something that everybody would've rather avoided in the end.


End file.
